Security guards at the site where the Cyber Ninjas are allegedly conducting an audit of ballots cast in the November 2020 election in Maricopa County blocked the official liaison from the Republican-led Arizona senate from entering the site, calling into question who’s actually running the recount that was ordered by the GOP-dominated senate.

According to the Arizona Republic, Ken Bennett, the Senate liaison to the audit, was blocked from entering the building at the state fairgrounds on Friday.  On Thursday, Bennett had shared some of the audit data with people critical of the audit and the audit process, possibly incurring the Cyber Ninjas’ wrath.

The Arizona senate paid Cyber Ninjas, a company with no experience in election audits or monitoring, $150,000 to conduct the audit, which Republicans believed would show fraud in the Maricopa County vote tally.  However, others in the pro-Trump machine have been raising funds to continue the recount, leading some to question if the Cyber Ninjas are taking orders from one of the major funders to the multi-million dollar effort.

Republican senate president Karen Fann stated that while Bennett is still the official liaison, another representative for the senate, Randy Pullen, represented the senate at the site on Friday.  Cyber Ninjas spokesman Rod Thomson told the Republic that Fann made the decision to block Bennett from the site; Fann did not respond to a request for comment on that statement.

The data Bennett provided to election analysts Larry Moore and Benny White summed up the findings from the initial recount done by Cyber Ninjas, which found the audit totals tracking closely with the official results.